


brain noodle soup

by ey-spacecadet (dumpsdoods)



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Character Study, Gen, ezri struggles a lot, yet. i love her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25037269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dumpsdoods/pseuds/ey-spacecadet
Summary: Ezri, after the operation.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	brain noodle soup

**Author's Note:**

> I swear the title will make sense. 
> 
> also i drew a cover for this because i dont know what self control is: https://starfleetspacecadet.tumblr.com/post/640946829923647488/cover-for-this-fic-i-wrote-back-when-i-was-having

When Dax first woke from the operation, the glaring white lights blaring down at her, all she knew was she was staring up at bright lights, the sterile stench of a medical station assaulting her nostrils, and that her hands were empty. Someone had just been holding her hand? No— She’d just laid down, the doctor delivered a hypo to her neck, and that was her last memory. Or… had she been in a shuttle crash?

Turns out she had a lot of "last memories."

The doctor was asking urgent questions, but they were far away and muffled. Beeping of tricorder scannings echoed in her ears. She closed her eyes. Swallowed once. Then again. When she finally found her voice, she rasped, “Where’s Worf?” 

A nervous silence followed.

“I guess that answers that,” someone to the left of her mumbled.

“Ensign Ti- Dax?” 

Several responses wanted to come out of her mouth, and the overwhelming uncertainty of identity and memory rendered her unable to respond. 

“...Ezri?” the doctor tried again. 

Ezri. Her name was Ezri, not Audrid, not Curzon, not Torias. Not Jadzia. Not Jadzia. Not Jadzia. 

Her heart ached, and all Ezri could do was stare at the ceiling and weep silent tears as the weight of eight lifetimes crashed around her ears. 

—

The return trip to Trill was long, and took the USS Destiny about a week at full warp to reach it. The medical crew was all a-flutter with keeping the symbiont as safe as possible until it could reach its expected host and save it’s precious life. Ezri hadn’t had time to think about it, choosing instead to bury her face in work and studies and go along, business as usual. After this, the Destiny would return to the front lines, and it was (partially) her responsibility to make sure everyone on the ship was ready for the task.

Plans for her life were laid out in front of her, things she had worked towards and struggled for, carving out her own place in the stars with this crew of people she had hoped to become close friends with. She was still in training, and she wanted to learn so much from the ship’s counselor, a bolian who had an exceptional skill for lightening the mood. She had a life all her own and was finally in charge of her own destiny. 

“Ensign Tigan to Sick Bay,” her communicator had beeped, and, well, that had been the end of that, hadn’t it?

—

It took a day, but when Ezri was able to get out of bed and had achieved some sense of vague emotional stability (i.e. not bursting into tears every thirty minutes as she re-recognized her surroundings), the captain came to visit. 

Captain took in Dax’s disheveled appearance, her restless fingers curling and messing with the fabric on the sick bay bed. “C’mon Ensign. Let’s take a walk.”

They stepped out of Sick Bay. Dax was glad for the break from the antiseptic smell that clung to the place (a new dislike), and even more so for the captain’s solid, silent presence. Ezri fidgeted with her clothes, not willing to be the one to break the silence. 

They came to a stop by a window, the captain peeking out and letting out a soft sigh. “This view. I’ll never get tired of it.” Ezri followed her gaze, staring out at the lights flashing by the window. 

The stars. They were moving so quickly outside, whizzing past at beyond light speeds outside.

The ground coming up to her, the hum of the shuttle sputtering out and wailing, the explosion of pain on her forehead, her arms, her neck. The whirling of stars spinning across her viewscreen, a too-fast torrent of death ripping into her skin.

Oh god. 

“I’m going to be sick,” Ezri announced.

The captain chuckled. She looked over at Ezri’s pale face and her grin promptly fell into horror. “Oh, you’re not kidding.”

—

“I’m never going to live this down,” Ezri groaned, face in her hands. A Starfleet officer with space sickness. A Starfleet officer with space sickness who threw up on her captain's shoes. 

The CMO gave her a hypo for Ezri’s (new, shiny!) space sickness. “No,” she agreed cheerfully. “You will not.”

—

It had always been a possibility, they informed her, after the fact. The USS Destiny has been selected to carry the Dax symbiont to safety because it was the only ship close enough with a trill officer on board. In some weird roundabout way, Ezri had been chosen as the next Dax host— if by the wrong people to make the choice. 

Nobody ever talked to Ezri about it, of course. Nobody had ever asked her, or even informed her of her status as “the backup plan.” Nobody had asked her to think, really think about the implications of a freshly-unjoined symbiont onboard.

Not like she could have said “no, I think I will just let that sacred member of my society die, thanks,” but it would have been nice to have forewarning other than the split second decision the harried CMO thrust upon her two days into the voyage. 

—

On the ship, the crew members had been sympathetic to her plight. In their eyes, it was a medical procedure that, while often performed on Trill, was life altering and Ezri had not asked for it. It wasn’t a gift to them. It was an unwanted intrusion on their lives, disrupting their relationships with Ezri. Some even considered it a violation of Ezri’s rights. The captain, in particular, had offered her the choice to get out of it in soft, gentle tones, even as it was blatantly clear to everyone that there was never any real choice.

Ezri wished she could say her Joining was welcomed on Trill. It was almost the opposite; sure, Ezri shouldn’t have gone through the operation. She was undeserving.

The Symbiosis Commission didn’t tell her these things completely outright, but Ezri’s memories of serving as the head informed her of what the little glances between the members meant, of what they were actually saying beneath the shiny words and stiff smiles. 

The first order of business was securing her in the compound the Commission was housed. An investigation was being done into how, exactly, the Dax symbiont got into danger on the starship. 

“You think I had something to do with it,” Ezri burst out, barely containing her horror at the revelation. Stealing a symbiont? How could anyone dream of putting a symbiont at risk? 

Verad.

She pushed the thought away. She was not him. 

Well. Ezri Tigan hadn’t been him. 

At least, she was pretty sure?

The man at the head of the table narrowed his eyes at her, icy blocks of unfeeling cold anger. All pretenses dropped. At least they were being honest with her now. “That is what we intend to find out.”

—

The entire “investigation” affair was anticlimactic, honestly. After the poorly veiled threats leveled at her, she had expected to be subject to excruciatingly detailed interrogations and tests. She did undergo several medical exams to ensure that the symbiont was alive and well, but there was little poking and prodding from there about the investigation specifically. All that really happened was that Starfleet gave the Commission all their ‘round-the-clock logs and reports on what occurred on the Destiny, including Ezri’s own report, and then a representative from the Commission asked her a couple of questions to make sure her story lined up. 

Apparently, it did, because in about one (anxiety ridden, exhausting) week later Ezri was notified the case was closed, a shockingly short amount of time for these investigations. She couldn’t say she remembered a lot from that week. She thinks she spent a lot of time sleeping. When you were sleeping, you didn’t have to worry about whose body was whose.

The Dax symbiont had nearly died because of a well documented medical issue that often crops up in freshly unjointed symbionts, and there was genuinely nothing Ezri could have done to cause such an accident. That, combined with Ezri’s moves having been accounted for from the time she boarded the Destiny weeks before Jadzia died, made any case against her virtually impossible.

No discrepancies in her combadge movements to explain, not even a faulty memory causing Ezri to slip into hot water. Her initial reaction was relief coupled with disappointment at how easily it was resolved, followed by relief coupled with bewilderment at her disappointment. The sweeping emotions were enough to reduce her to tears within seconds, much to the alarm of the Commission staff member who had the misfortune of having to tell her the news.

Ezri thanked him through her blubbering, closed the door, and turned to fall face first onto the bed and bury her face in the scratchy pillows. 

So. She wouldn’t be sent to rehabilitation, or whatever they did to Joined trill who Joined unscrupulously. Would they have removed Dax, if they had judged her guilty? Would they have sentenced Ezri to that death? 

She did not know. Information in her own memory was woefully out of date, even if she could bring herself to think through it. She was realizing that despite the centuries of knowledge dumped into her brain, she did not know a lot of things. Trill felt familiar in an alien way, it had so many things she recognized but nothing she saw reminded Dax of Ezri. She was lost here and she was alone and she wasn’t sure who she was and she’s pretty sure she just narrowly avoided state sanctioned murder. If she was Ezri’s own patient, she didn’t know what she would do with herself. 

She let out a strangled, bizarre laugh that turned into a sob. God, she wished that ____ was here. So many names popped into her head as she floundered through the conflicting memories of someone who could comfort her. She had no idea which of them were currently alive. 

—

When Ezri was younger, she had spent a lot of time in hospitals and emergency rooms because of her practice. Twisting her ankle was a common issue, or that one time she broke her wrist by pushing too far. The doctor would come in, fix her up, then level her with a glare to “take it easy for once, alright?” Ezri would cheerfully agree, and the next day would begin working on her leaps again. 

Leaps? She frowned. Gymnastics. Emony. 

Dammit. She had been so sure that was an Ezri memory.

Figuring out who a memory belonged to wasn’t easy; it wasn’t as if the memories were labeled, or color coded or whatever. She had to trace the context of the memory— maybe it was an activity unique to that specific host, like the gymnastics, maybe it was a glance in a mirror, or someone she recognized. Backpedaling from there, she was usually able to figure out which memory belonged to who. Sometimes though. There were these small bits of memory, simple things like sipping a warm drink, or a sunrise on Trill. She didn’t know if she’d ever figure out who experienced those. 

Maybe it didn't matter. Practically, they were all her own memories now. 

It felt like it mattered. 

When Ezri had thought about Joined trill when she was little, she kinda always imagined a bunch of dead legends gathered around the shoulders of the living trill like blue ghosts, commenting and offering helpful opinions and guiding the trill through life. Easy; they helped, they guided, but in the end their thoughts were their thoughts and her thoughts were hers. A common image in trill culture was the living trill with the images of the symbiont’s previous lives lifting them up, physically pushing the individual further into greatness. 

This was not, in fact, how Ezri felt about the whole experience. 

In reality, it was much more like… it was just her. Alone, in all the ways that mattered. Confused, where she used to be confident. 

She wasn’t making any sense.

The best analogy she could muster up (as she stared vacantly at her lunch) is that her brain was a bowl of soup with her memories swirling around as noodles. And the Dax symbiont was a bigger bowl of soup with eight other bowls of soup already poured in, and the doctor who laid her down on the operation table had dumped that muck of symbiont-soup directly into the bowl of Ezri-soup and stirred it up with her own broth, so whenever she dipped her spoon in and looked for a bit of noodle-memory she didn't know what bit of the trill-symbiont-soup would actually fill her spoon. And once she took a bite, who knows what kind of effect the soup would have on her- maybe she’d yearn for something long gone, she’d probably forget which name was hers, and maybe she would be the first Dax host who got space sickness from Torias’ memories. She usually wasn’t able to even tell what soup the noodle came from until she’d spoken it aloud.

… alright, so the metaphor wasn’t perfect. 

She gave Mother the wrong name. 

Her spoon stilled against the side of the bowl, letting the broth that filled her spoon spill back into the soup.

—

Sometimes Ezri would be minding her own damn business when she would see a perfectly innocent and common thing and burst into absolutely inconsolable tears. 

(Ezri had always been a bit of a crybaby. Figures that would be one of the few traits she could now classify under the “Ezri” category and not something cool like knowing how to fly a starship through an asteroid field or doing a quadruple somersault.)

A recent example:

She saw a particular dress pattern on a nurse. Something about the cut of the dress and the specific shade of purple made her unbearably sad, and she had to choke back sobs that seemed to come out of nowhere. She had wandered through the halls, tears streaming down her face, feeling utterly overwhelmed for hours after. She had to be escorted to her room by a staff member, who desperately tried to keep Ezri from crying on her uniform.

Bewilderingly, no memory popped up with this emotion, only an intense loneliness and regret that took Ezri’s breath away. There was simply too much there.

—

She got the news a month into her recovery: the Destiny and all its crew had been destroyed by Jem’Hadar fighters.

There was something comforting and terrible (she was a woman of contradictions, these days), knowing the tears she shed for them were wholly her own. 

—

Ezri in general was a fairly average trill. Not a genius. Not a prodigy. She was an assistant counselor and a Starfleet ensign at a perfectly reasonable age to be those things. Ezri thought it was a little insulting that the Commission thought those things were easy, but her protests died on her throat at the thought of Jadzia and her four scientific distinctions from Starfleet before hitting the age of 23.

She hadn’t been a prodigy or an over-achiever. She’d just wanted to get out of that damned house. 

The trill who had been lined up to Join with Dax was a young artistic prodigy (of course) named Bemun, barely older than Ezri. Yet he was an accomplished artist, attending the renowned art school on Andoria with special early admittance, writing and publishing several field defining essays, and presenting art pieces that drew attention from art communities from several worlds, including Earth and Vulcan. His mother had been a diplomat and his father a renowned scientist who was Joined himself, so from early childhood he had been trained for this opportunity. 

Frankly, it was a little over the top. 

She thought when she met him he would remind her of Norvo and his sweet artist’s soul and endlessly kind eyes. He wasn’t… exactly that. He had a purpose to him, a manic energy and passionate drive. And a little bit of a case of, in her professional psychiatric opinion, overblown ego.

Just a little bit into her stay on Trill, she ran into him in the halls of the Symbiosis Commission. She recognized him instantly, having read and re-read his file so many times (perhaps she was engaging in what her textbook might call “obsessive behavior”), and he had clearly done the same (now she was actually gonna call that obsessive behavior because she was a psychologist and she could).

Naively, perhaps, she thought he might be able to help her, or at least be friendly enough to share what the Symbiosis Commision had told him about the Dax symbiont. Instead, the confrontation went a little bit like this:

“You’re Dax?” He asked. His voice and face were stone cold, looking her up and down. Sizing her up. Obviously, he already knew the answer to his question.

Whatever he saw, or didn’t see, he was not impressed. Or interested in conversation.

Valiantly, Ezri tried to push through with friendly conversation. “Uh. Yes! Yeah, thats me. Dax. And you’re… Bemun!” She let out a nervous laugh.

Bemun stared at her. 

“So, uh… You going to get another symbiont? Or—” Ezri winced. Was that a sensitive topic? It seemed like a sensitive topic.

He raised an eyebrow. “So you can take that one, too?” Ezri got the impression that he was barely holding himself back from sneering at her.

“I didn’t—” Red alert. Abort. Abort conversation. “Maybe I’ll just— I actually have to go now. See you around?”

Bemun’s lips twisted and he turned around and strode away, presumably before he made a very loud, very public scene and made accusations he couldn’t prove but that he oh-so-desperately wanted to. He felt he was entitled to her mind, her eight lifetimes of memory and existence, and she realized that if he tried to take it from her, nobody in this hall, in this world, would try very hard to stop him. 

Hot tears welled up in her eyes. Again. Quickly, she ducked out of the hallway into a nearby rest area. Locking herself in, she sunk to her knees and felt the loneliness of the world suffocate her.

This whole symbiosis commission thing wasn’t working out.

She paused, sniffled a little. Then why should she stay here?

—

Her eyes were raw and dry. She was so sick of crying.

Maybe this didn’t make sense. She shifted the strap on her shoulder. But really, nothing was making sense. On good days, she could hardly remember her own name. But there was one constant in her most recent memories, one figure that seemed to connect the threads of some of her mismatched past. 

She was not uncertain now, for the first time in weeks. Maybe that was Curzon and Jadzia talking, but it felt nice.

She steeled herself against the nausea that was sure to come as she settled in a seat on the morning transport to Earth.


End file.
